


Guard

by venndaai



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Glass Cannon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 08:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20653877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: AU: the process at the end of Glass Cannon resurrects revenant!Jedao and anchors him to moth!Jedao.





	Guard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gostaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gostaks/gifts).

There was a moment when he wanted nothing more than to give up. To slip away, let himself be overwritten. He didn’t have much to stick around for. 

They’re not mine, he thought. They’re not my memories. They’re not me.

No, the memories, said, they’re _me_.

He opened his eyes.

“Fuck,” Cheris said. She looked even paler and greener than she had a moment before, and he was still trying to forget that memory of her vomiting up spun glass, but he had much bigger things to try and forget now. 

She was looking at his shadow. It was long and wavering under the swinging ceiling light, but it seemed to flinch away from the perimeter of the glowing silver cabinets. The shadow had strange holes in it.

Not holes. Eyes. 

“Who are you?” someone asked in his head, in his own voice. Not the voice part of him still felt he should have, though he barely remembered it, the high cracking voice of a teenager, but the voice he’d been given, a man’s voice with his own drawl. 

“This isn’t what was supposed to happen,” Jedao tried to shout at Cheris, but his voice was too hoarse from screaming. 

“Jedao,” Cheris said, “are you-”

“He’s in my head,” Jedao managed to croak, at the same time the voice he was pretty sure Cheris couldn’t hear said, “That’s Captain- General Cheris. The anchor. So who are _ you _?”

_ Someone who wishes you’d stayed dead, _ Jedao tried to think at the voice, except he was used to thinking on the moth frequency now, and the response he got was from Harmony. _ Cousin? Are you coming? _

_ On our way, _ he thought back.

_ You’re bringing the human? _

_ Yes. _ He certainly wasn’t going to abandon Cheris now, when she was the only one who could maybe explain what the fuck had happened to him.

“It’s the general’s ghost,” Cheris said, pulling herself to her feet with the assistance of one of the cabinets. “I think we resurrected him. He’s anchored to you now.” There was something in her voice Jedao couldn’t identify. Exhaustion, certainly, but also something that could have been sorrow or could have been anger. It occurred to him that for the first time he was really seeing her, just her, without any of himself mixed in. 

He wondered whether she hated him more or less, now. 

“What do I need to know?” he asked, his othersense painfully aware of the approaching Shuos. 

“He can’t read your mind,” she said, “or at least, that’s what he told me. To be honest, everything I was told about anchoring came from him or Kujen and I don’t trust any of it, but he probably won’t respond to you unless you speak out loud.”

Which was convenient for her, since she’d get to hear at least half of the conversation, but the voice in his head said, “She’s right.”

“Do you have access to his memories?” Cheris asked. 

“No,” he said, knowing he was saying it too fast. It was true, he didn’t remember, he didn’t, he didn’t- 

She studied him, face unreadable. “And what does General Jedao remember?”

“The bomb,” the ghost said. Jedao repeated his words. 

“Fuck,” Cheris said again. She stumbled over to him, and started undoing the restraints. There were bruises on his skin where he’d struggled, but they were fading rapidly. “We need to get out of here.”

“She must be very upset to be swearing this much,” the ghost said. “I remember she only descends into profanity in extreme circumstances.”

“Shut up,” Jedao said, “shut up, shut up, shut up.” 

The ghost was mercifully silent. 

“I have a way out,” Jedao said, trying to roll himself upright. 

  


They made it to the Harmony. There was more pain, but there was always more pain. He’d arrived with his secrets intact. Neither Cheris nor his newest problem seemed to have guessed he could talk to the needlemoth. 

Jedao lay curled on his bunk, under the cheerful blue quilt, and looked at his hand terminal, set to video recording mode. The face looking back at him was not quite the one he’d seen in the mirror before Cheris’s little experiment. Kujen had taken artistic liberties, when remaking him. The general’s face was a little uglier, a little less symmetrical, his skin pockmarked in places. Looked maybe a few years older. Looked more real. 

“It’s all your fault,” Jedao told it.

“Really? You’ve had not one moment of agency since your creation?” the mirror asked him. “Remarkable.”

Jedao’s fingers clenched on the edges of the terminal, and his eyes burned hot. He wondered again why Kujen had made a moth that could weep. 

“We’ve got bigger things to worry about than your self loathing,” the arch-traitor said. “Like what the secret is that you’re keeping from Cheris.” The image smiled. “Don’t try to hide your reaction. I know you too well for that. Why don’t you tell me your secrets? Isn’t that why you brought me back? To take advantage of my skills and knowledge?”

“No,” Jedao said. “I didn’t mean to bring you back. I meant to take responsibility for your crimes.”

“You can’t,” the Immolation Fox said. “They’re mine.”

Jedao wanted to believe that, wanted it with all the longing in his heart. But he knew he didn’t get what he wanted. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.” 

And he made a silent oath: he wouldn’t let himself dissolve into this man. He’d hold himself together, for eternity if necessary, to guard the world from Shuos Jedao. 

Maybe it was just a pretty lie he was telling to himself, but at least it gave him purpose. 


End file.
